New York Times (May 31, 2012)
May 31, 2012, 10:27 AM
In India, Cynicism and a Nationwide Strike
By HEATHER TIMMONS and PAMPOSH RAINA
Strdel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Activists from Shiv Sena, a regional political party, set a two wheeler
on fire in the city of Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, as they protested the
recent fuel hike on Thursday.
A nationwide bandh, or strike, in India on Thursday shuttered
businesses and emptied roads across the country, and was accompanied in
some areas by violence and protests.
The strike was called by a coalition of opposition parties, including
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the National Democratic Alliance,
in response to a recent rise in fuel prices. The opposition parties are
demanding a rollback of a 7.5 rupee (13 U.S. cents) increase in a liter
of gasoline, which is as much as ten percent in some cities.
The higher fuel price comes as India’s economy is slowing, inflation
remains high, anger over corruption continues to build and there is
growing concern about the country’s long-term economic prospects.
“There is so much unemployment, educated people are increasingly
joining the taxi driving business,” said Rupak Soni, the owner of four
taxis operating from the Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station in New Delhi
on Thursday.
Thursday’s bandh, though, is unlikely to have any impact on higher fuel
prices or the economy, he said, nor would it help to have a different
political party in power. “Nothing we do will make any difference to
this hike. Not even changing the government,” Mr. Soni said. “Both the
Congress and BJP loot the poor.”
Rafiq Maqbool/Associated Press
Policemen detain an activist of the Republic Party of India, a
political party, who tried to block traffic during a nationwide strike
to protest a steep hike in fuel prices in Mumbai, Maharashtra.
In northeast India, demonstrations were common and dozens of people
were arrested, local police officials said. “Demonstrators staged road
and rail blockades,” Champak Bhattacharya, superintendent of police for
North 24 Parganas, a district in West Bengal, and “attacked a bus and
broke its glass panes with stones and bricks.” The police have arrested
“38 troublemakers,” he said.
Three buses belonging to the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport
Corporation were torched in the city early Thursday, although the
arsonists asked passengers to alight before setting the buses on fire,
a traffic officer said. Public buses stayed off the roads for the
remainder of the day, but by early Thursday afternoon the roads were
calm, the police control room reported.
Large shops and commercial establishments in Bangalore were shut while
smaller shops selling groceries and vegetables were open, but they were
“ready to shut at a moment’s notice,” as one shopkeeper said. Large
information technology companies like Infosys declared a holiday or
encouraged their employees to work from home. The city’s new Metro
remained open, and by early evening transportation returned to normal.
Citizens were cynical about the bandh in Bangalore too. Sandeep Menon,
an information technology executive, said “This is more of an attempt
by the BJP to test the waters and see if they have any public support –
it is not that they are bothered about petrol prices.”
Saurabh Das/Associated Press
A policeman stops a man from deflating the tire of a bus in New Delhi,
on Thursday, during a nationwide shutdown called by the opposition
parties to protest the recent fuel price hike by the government.
The streets of Delhi, ordinarily bustling with traffic, were quiet. Few
state-run buses operated, leaving thousands of people stranded in the
scorching heat. (Temperatures in Delhi reached 45 degrees Celsius on
Thursday.) Auto-rickshaws were running in limited numbers. The Delhi
Metro rail, which carries several thousand passengers across the city
throughout the day, operated as normal.
Most retail stores in Delhi had their shutters down, but banks and fast
food chains like Dominos Pizza and the recently opened Dunkin Donuts
were unaffected. The McDonald’s outlet in central Delhi was closed.
Ravinder Prakash Bansal, 42, owner of a corner store, Raja Store, in
the Karol Bagh neighborhood of Delhi, said that the fuel price increase
is squeezing his margins. Suppliers start “increasing their prices,
saying the petrol prices have risen,” he said, but he can’t raise his
retail prices because many goods are already marked with a Maximum
Retail Price, or MRP.
He kept his store open Thursday, at the risk of the local union
damaging his store, because he had already suffered losses this week.
On Mondays, his store is closed, and on Tuesday, there was a murder in
the neighborhood so the police had shut down all the stores, he said.
Mr. Bansal said that he doesn’t see the point in the bandh because he
believes it won’t affect the government’s decision about the gasoline
price.
Dibyangshu Sarkar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Activists shout slogans against Prime Minster Manmohan Singh during a
protest against the recent fuel price hike in Kolkata, West Bengal on
Thursday.
At the normally busy Nizamuddin Railway Station, there was little
traffic. As travelers poured out of the station, dragging their
baggage, they were astonished to see that few, if any, of the
auto-rickshaws were running. Some tried to cajole the drivers to take
them to the closest subway station but most were refused.
One auto-rickshaw driver who refused passengers, Dilip Gupta, sat idly
in his vehicle. “If we go out on the street, people might damage the
vehicles or attack me. What if the passenger gets hurt?” he said.
“Hare Ram!” moaned Deepa Jain, who had come from Rajasthan with her
three children and five pieces of luggage, unaware of the strike. She
was desperately trying to flag down auto-rickshaws. “This is a big
headache,” she said. “Let’s see if we can get an auto-rickshaw ahead.”
A police officer sitting close to the station said he had been watching
the stranded passengers all morning but couldn’t help them. “What can I
do?” he said.
Aijaz Rahi/Associated Press
Passengers wait at an empty bus terminal in Bangalore, Karnataka, on
Thursday, during the nationwide shutdown.
Sruthi Gottipati and Malavika Vyawahare contributed reporting to this
story from New Delhi, Charukesi Ramadurai from Bangalore and Anuradha
Sharma from Siliguri.
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